With the increase in electronically accessible material, the ability to find that material in an organized and efficient manner is becoming more difficult. One technique typically used for finding and organizing electronically accessible material is through the use of search engines. For example, a user may submit a query containing one or more parameters that are used to search for items that are identified in response to the query. The parameters are compared to an index, referred to herein as a “search index,” containing identifications of electronically accessible material, and ordered listings of items matching the query parameters are returned. The search index, upon identifying items matching the query parameters, typically organizes or ranks the identification of those items based on how close they match the query parameters. The organized items are then returned to the searching entity in the form of a query result set.
While the above searching technique works well for searching a single search index and obtaining an ordered query result set from that search index, it does not provide an efficient means for searching multiple indexes and obtaining a single ordered query result set. Using the above technique, an entity would have to individually search each search index and then manually review each of the different query results sets. One technique that has been implemented to attempt to resolve this deficiency is through the simple merging of multiple query result sets based on the ranking of individual items identified within those sets. However, because different search indexes utilize different properties and definitions for determining the relevance of items matching the parameters of a query, the simple merged query result set will likely not contain an accurate ordering of the item identifications contained therein. Because different search indexes utilize different definitions and parameters for ranking matching items, an item of higher actual relevance to the query may be ranked lower than another item from a different search index that is of less actual relevance because of the different factors used in ranking those items by the different search indexes.
Accordingly, there is a need for a system and method for merging identifications of items from separate query result sets into a single query result set such that those identifications of items are more accurately ordered based on actual relevance to the query.